


Along Life’s Weary Track

by zarabithia



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Domestic, M/M, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Past Riley/Sam Wilson, Pumpkins, Sam Can Talk to Birds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 03:28:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2413295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarabithia/pseuds/zarabithia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam goes home again, eventually, after the summer is done. He takes Steve with him. Various birds mock him along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Along Life’s Weary Track

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Partially inspired by [this conversation.](http://zarabithia.tumblr.com/tagged/freebirds%20and%20pumpkins) Title comes from John Howard Bryant’s ”The Indian Summer.”

It’s a long summer.

Some of the hotels are better than others; both of them grew up too poor to indulge the fact that Steve’s backpay means they could stay in amazing hotel suites every single night of their trip across the world to save a man who can’t decide whether or not he wants to be saved.

Besides, the nice hotels have the softest beds, and they need actual sleep now and then.

(“What are you doing with your life, Wilson?” Sam sits on a gratifyingly hard bed that feels like rock beneath his head in a terrible hotel in Phoenix. He looks out at the window and could swear that the quail is both talking to him and has gained the magical ability to have Riley’s slow, southern voice of disapproval. Well, fuck that. If Riley wanted to disapprove, he shouldn’t have died and he should have come back as a more impressive bird than a quail.)

There’s a lot of … sitting on this mission. A lot of sitting on beds too soft because the mission had been too dirty to face the idea of going back to a hotel that also was, and there’s a lot of sitting on hard beds because sitting up and collecting his thoughts is a perfectly normal reaction to nightmares that come and go for both Sam and Steve.

When they leave the hotels, it’s not any better. There’s a lot of perching - on rooftops, in cars, at diners; Sam’s wings have been gloriously rebuilt by the same anonymous benefactor who designed the first set and all Sam wants to do is stretch them. Instead, Sam and Steve spend so much of the summer … waiting, and Sam feels stuck.

(“Birds have wings to fly.” Sam can feel the sweat running down his back as he rolls down the car windows outside of a Denny’s in Indiana, and he frowns at the sparrow that seems to have Leila’s natural Harlem accent, this time twinged with the same disapproval that she gave Sam when he’d invited her to move to D.C. with him after the last tour.

"At least Riley had an excuse to posses a bird," he huffs as Steve emerges carrying four carryout boxes. "What the hell is your excuse, Leila? You’re alive and well."

"Not in a cage," the sparrow huffs.)

Sam’s a little short on temper, but that’s normal in a summer. He remembers history teachers trying to pass off “riots” as the result of tempers raising too high to match the summer heat and he remembers psychology professors backing those teacher’s hypotheses up. He remembers sitting in class and asking the pigeon trying to get in if they’d ever heard an owl call swooping in on their prey a “riot.”

Nobody believes you when you tell them that a pigeon can laugh at you.

(“Eggs?” It’s not a laugh when the pigeon in London says it, with a voice that sounds suspiciously like his mama’s. The damn bird is pecking on the window of their hotel and Steve wonders idly if it’s okay - because of course he does - and Sam thinks about telling him that the damn bird is implying that this shitty hotel is their nest.)

But Sam is in the middle of savoring a truly terrible warm beer when Steve suddenly picks up his laptop and throws it across the room. The small room they’ve rented for the night isn’t really big enough to support a decent Captain America throwing arm, but it still makes a satisfying crunch when it hits the wall. A muffled Spanish curse from the other side of the wall greets the action, and Steve almost looks guilty.

Sam lifts his head from the headboard at the outburst and gestures to the broken laptop on the floor. Man’s got a temper, and it should stop surprising Sam, but it always surprises him. And by surprise, Sam means it always fills him with a kind of warmth that those old patriotic “Captain America Wants You!” posters never had.

This mission is complicated enough, and Sam’s decided that he is going to ignore that warmth. He’s decided it exactly fourteen times in the past six weeks.

"The Internet?" Sam asks, because between "James Barnes is a traitor" and "Hydra isn’t really a Nazi organization," there’s a whole of rage-inducing shit on the Internet; that’s before they even get to "Boy who grew up poor and disabled in the Depression with a single mom is a Republican."

They’ve had this conversation before, once or twice.

Steve stands there, his great, broad shoulders heaving in a way that isn’t actually necessary; he does that when he gets mad. It’s like he forgets that the asthma disappeared when his muscles appeared and he always tries his best to take in as much air as he possibly can whenever he gets upset.

"I’ve loved two people," Steve explains. "Two people I wanted to spend the rest of my life loving."

Sam knows this. Sam takes a drink of his beer and doesn’t say anything, but what’s there to say? Peggy Carter has given Sam instructions on taking care of him and mistaken him for Gabe Jones, and they are chasing down the other person that Steve’s talking about.

"But people think." Steve places his hands on his hips and turns to look at Sam. Sam wants to say something then, because the man wears hurt across his face like the ten-year-old nephew back home. "People think I’m on this trip because I can’t… can’t get over my feelings for one of them."

Sam rubs his thumb over the label of his beer. “There’s no shame in not giving up on someone you care about, Steve.”

"No shame in caring for a third person either," Steve says, and there’s a stubborn tilt to his chin that is familiar by now, but suddenly takes on a new context entirely.

(“Are you happy?” The air conditioning is broken in the hotel in Paris, and the lark outside the window sounds suspiciously like Riley would have sounded had he been born in an entirely different country.

It’s not as disapproving this time; considering the number of times that Riley has had his tongue in Sam’s throat, he’d better not start sounding judgmental about the naked bundle of muscles lying next to Sam on the bed.

Steve shifts beside him, pulling the covers up over him, because the man is perpetually cold; Sam thinks about a shower but he doesn’t want to leave Steve’s side. The lark pecks against the window sill, and Sam ignores him.)

Steve is a person who jumps out of planes without a parachute, and he is a person who will destroy an entire gym’s supply of punching bags; this is really everything that anyone needs to know about how he approaches intimacy.

Steve is all hands and muscles and enthusiasm; he is the human equivalent of Jody’s damn dog greeting Sam the minute that he walked back in the door after that first tour ended. It’s kisses everywhere and enthusiastic wriggles in all of the right places fueled by the same stamina that allows Steve to pass Sam on a jog without even thinking about breaking a sweat.

Sometimes,that’s great. Sometimes, Sam meets his enthusiasm with all of his own; he can’t keep up but he can give it his best effort and he can collapse against the pillows and make jokes about needing to be carried to the shower.

"Bridal style, not that sack of potatoes shit you tried to pull back in Texas."

"I’ve never carried anyone bridal style," Steve teases him, and now that they’ve dirtied up each other and the sheets, there’s a bit of the old duck-and-grin style of Steve Rogers’ wooing. It’s a bizarre thing to acknowledge when Sam’s ass is still sore and the lips being pressed together in such an impressive display of old-fashioned sensibility are directly responsible for the two-day-old hickey on Sam’s neck.

"Think you can handle it? I didn’t have that big of a breakfast," Sam retorts.

Steve’s grin doesn’t change a bit between the time he decides not to verbally answer Sam and the time that Sam is lifted into his arms.

(Ducks are such ridiculous creatures and there’s a flock of them flying over head when that first splash of water hits them. It seems like there are ducks everywhere in this section of Kentucky, and all of them seem to laugh as joyfully as the ones flying over their hotel room.

"The first blowjob I ever gave, it was raining in an alley," Steve says as he drops to his knees, and man, Sam’s not sure that he can go another round yet.

But Steve’s mouth is awfully tempting, and Sam’s sure Steve won’t let him fall. He leans back into the shower, grips two handfuls of Steve’s hair, and lets the joyful cries of the ducks echo in his mind. Their voices remind him of the joyful and disbelieving backslaps of two men who hadn’t expected to get ouf the mission alive, but for a moment, had been able to do so.)

But sometimes, the Captain does not get to call the shots. Sometimes, one or both of them are injured; sometimes the lack of air conditioning is truly oppressive. Sometimes, Sam feels a little needy, and sometimes Steve has jumped out of one too many fucking planes with completely awful timing that is picking at every single one of the Riley-shaped wounds on Sam’s heart.

Sometimes, Sam’s just in the mood for something different.

Sometimes, Sam pulls back from a mouthful of exuberant tongue and lips and shakes his head.

Steve always looks a little unsure, as though it might be a rejection. Sam knows he’s trusted - Steve had come to him when the whole world had been out to get him, and they’ve only gotten closer since then. But still, sometimes, Sam wonders how long he’s gonna have to know Steve before Steve stops thinking that a rejection might happen.

Maybe the answer is never; Sarah’s cocker spaniel never stopped expecting you to hit it when you reached down to pet it after they rescued it from Old Man Andrews three doors down.

But Steve’s uncertainty disappears entirely when Sam whispers a simple order: “Lean back, Soldier.”

Sam’s read the history books; he knows that Steve is actually terrible at following orders.

But there are exceptions to every rule, and the way that Steve leans back into the bed and follows everything Sam says with a “Please” and “Thank You” and pleased whimpers while Sam takes his time in being attentive prove that well.

“That was amazing,” Steve murmurs after the latest round.

“I do what you do … just slower,” Sam sing-songs back and Steve huffs a laugh into his pillow.

(Seattle is a long way from Harlem and the blue truck they’ve rented is nothing at all like the front steps of his father’s church. But Sam thinks of home almost immediately when he sees the little red robin trying so hard to impress its mate. The bright red makes him think of his mother’s favorite scarf - the one she wore every Sunday to church after a long week of trying to get people to register to vote or attend the local council meeting.

When Steve returns to the car and slips into the driver’s side, he doesn’t even have time to make his regular “On Your Left” comment before the robins are flying away together; the male is cooing “We’re going home,” in a voice that sounds just like Daddy in the midst of his best sermons, and Sam has the first sharp stab of homesickness since they left DC).

"I’ve never had zucchini bread," Steve says as they pile into the green car they’re renting in Nevada, two weeks later. Sam’s glad they switched it up; the Toyota has much better air conditioning than the Ford and it’s a long drive back to the East Coast, even though the adrenaline junkie next to him has never met a speed limit that he felt like obeying.

It must be nice, being someone the cops smile and wave at when you are actually breaking the law.

"Mom really pushed having communal roof top gardens in her organizing efforts. You have to be careful what you grow, but it turns out that zucchini is some kind of devil food that can survive extreme heat and city dwellers who don’t really know how to grow anything," Sam tells Steve while Sam adjusts his seat. The truck’s leg room had been better, admittedly. "One plant also produces enough food to feed an army. So every year, they plant a bunch, and every year there’s too much zucchini, and every year they’re sick of it by October."

Steve grins and grips the wheel a little tighter when he starts the engine.

Sam rolls his eyes. “You’re stressed out about meeting the family? Really?”

"The only ‘meet the family’ I ever had was with Bucky," Steve says, and they sit idly in the parking lot of the hotel whose water had gone out three times during their stay. "I was six when I met them. I wasn’t smart enough to know that I had to stress out about it."

"Relax. They’re going to love you."

"You think so?" Steve looks so eager at the idea, and Sam leans over to give his knee a squeeze.

"Sure. You’re going to eat all that damn zucchini bread. It’s going to make you their favorite."

Steve scowls at him, but the tenseness goes out of his shoulders, and Sam considers it a win.

(The red-tails greet him immediately. There’s two of them and they circle around the green Toyota silently for a moment before deciding to chat animatedly about Steve’s presence.

Hawks are a noisy, gossipy lot, and he ignores them for the most part in favor of the conversation on his left about everything that’s changed since the last time Steve was in Harlem.

A few words - “friend” and “mate” make their way through the conversation. They sound a lot like the high school locker room that Sam hasn’t thought of in years.)

Sam’s right, of course. The entire family loves him.

Maybe it’s because Dad’s used to traumatized orphans in his line of work. Maybe it’s because Mom’s used to dealing with people who want to help and can spot the same urge in another person from a million miles away. Maybe it’s because Sarah and Gideon have worried in their own ways about Sam since Riley died and Steve is confirmation that he’s doing okay, after all - even if he’s bringing down government organizations in his spare time these days.

Maybe it’s the fact that Steve volunteers to drive Jimmy, Jody, and Leena to Jersey to pick out pumpkins - which do not grow as well as zucchini on those rooftop gardens - and ends up in the middle of Sam’s childhood living room, surrounded by nephews, a niece, pumpkins, and carving knives while his artist concentration focuses in on making the perfect “vampire pumpkin” of Leena’s dreams.

Sam suspects it’s the latter reason that has allowed Steve Rogers to warm his way into the Wilson family’s heart, to be honest.

And that’s among the ones that don’t know how much Steve loves summertime. Mom, Dad, Sarah, Gideon, the brother-in-law that Sam’s grown used to because he won’t leave and the sister-in-law that he’s grown used to for hating Casper as much as Sam does - none of them know how much Steve’s never really warmed up. They don’t know that he hogs the blankets in the middle of August and wakes up freezing in the middle of a heat-wave.

They don’t know how extraordinary it is for him to be sitting there in a house that Mom and Dad never allow to get warmer than 67 degrees, in an ugly pumpkin sweater two sizes too small that came from the same pumpkin patch as vamp o’lantern, and calmly discussing what Hitler might have done with a vampire army with a kid balancing on each knee.

They don’t know, but Sam does, and he falls a little harder than he already has.

(The peregrine doesn’t sound like anyone; it never has. But the “welcome home” isn’t something that Sam misses, even in the middle of Steve’s first Wilson family dinner, complete with the worst pie that’s ever sat at the table.)

"We really messed up the pie," Steve says regretfully as he struggles out of that too-small sweater. "And I’m not sure that the kitchen will ever recover from our attempts."

"The kitchen will recover," Sam argues. "But nobody will ever let you live down the time you thought that real pumpkin was superior to canned pumpkin and allowed the kids to bake a pie that projectile vomited all over the Mom’s kitchen as a result."

Steve stands there, shirtless, in the middle of Sam’s childhood bedroom and Sam thinks they should give medals to people for the amount of control that he is demonstrating in not immediately jumping Steve right then and then.

"That’s a great image, Sam. Thank you," Steve says with a sigh. But he’s smiling as he pulls on the army shirt he intends to sleep in; it’s different from the one that he normally uses. The sleeves are longer.

Which makes sense, Sam supposes. It’s been a long and occasionally difficult summer. But it’s over, and things are different now.

(There’s a flutter of owl wings outside the window, and a softly murmured “Good night” that may come from either the owl or Steve.

Sam does not open his eyes long enough determine which one it is. Instead, he murmurs, “Yes, it is,” and pulls the blankets up over them both.)


End file.
